Institute of Education

Founded in 1902 as the London Day Training College, the Institute of Education's (IOE) original purpose was to train teachers for service in London's elementary schools. Over 100 years later London remains at the heart of the IOE's mission.

In October 2012, the Institute embarked on a strategic partnership with UCL, which led to the start of consultation on a formal merger in February 2014. On 2 December 2014 the Institute and UCL merged to create a new institution with over 35,000 students, the biggest higher education institution in London, and the largest postgraduate institution in the UK, with 19,000 postgraduate students. The IOE joined UCL as a single Faculty School, and became known as the UCL Institute of Education. The driver behind the proposal was academic, prompted by the sense that the world-leading research undertaken by the IOE was highly complementary to many areas of work undertaken by UCL.

The Institute is now the largest school of education in the UK and one of the biggest UK centres of social science.  It undertakes world-class research and consultancy in both areas alongside the initial training and on-going professional development of teachers and lecturers for all phases of compulsory, further, adult and higher education. We currently have over 7,000 students and 1,000 staff. We are active in every continent.

In the 2014 QS World University Rankings, we were ranked number one for education worldwide. We were shortlisted in the 'University of the Year' category of the 2014 Times Higher Education (THE) awards.

We've trained more than 10,000 teachers over the past decade and in January 2014, we were recognised by Ofsted for our 'outstanding' initial teacher training across primary, secondary and further education. 

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework, half our research was judged to be world-leading (ie awarded the highest grade of 4*) and we were ranked 1st for research strength in the field of education, across all UK universitites. The findings of our high-quality research have influenced government activity and policy in areas from early years to higher education and workplace learning.

We also specialise in study and research in health, psychology and longitudinal studies, among other areas of social science. Our three birth cohort studies have had a major impact over many years on policy for health, gender equality and young people.